The oil market could see a surplus of one million barrels of crude a day in 2025, the IEA forecast.
The excess will be driven by low demand in China and booming output from non-OPEC countries.
Non-OPEC producers are on track to expand production by 1.5 million barrels a day, the IEA estimated.
The oil market could see a major supply glut in 2025 thanks to booming production from non-OPEC states like the US and sagging demand in China, according to the International Energy Agency.
The IEA said in its November Oil Market Report that the world’s oil market is on track for a one-million barrel-a-day surplus next year.
The excess is largely being driven by a weakening economy in China. Demand for oil in the world’s second-largest economy contracted for six straight months in a row as of September, IEA data shows. This accounted for the “main drag” on demand this year, the report said.
Meanwhile, the agency is predicting strong oil production among non-OPEC producers led by countries like US, Guyana, Argentina, and Brazil.
Altogether, non-OPEC producers are on track to expand oil production by 1.5 million barrels a day, it estimated. That amount is more than the agency’s forecast for world oil consumption to grow by 990,000 barrels a day next year.
OPEC+, the oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia, has also said it will unwind its 2.2 million barrel-a-day production cuts, which have put pressure on supply over the past few years. The group could start lifting its production quota as soon as January, per its latest announcement.
“Our current balances suggest that even if the OPEC+ cuts remain in place, global supply exceeds demand by more than 1 mb/d next year. With supply risks omnipresent, a looser balance would provide some much-needed stability to a market upended by the Covid pandemic, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and, most recently, heightened unrest in the Middle East,” the IEA added.
The US has become the largest oil producer in the world, pumping out more crude than any other country in history for the last six years in a row, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Domestic production hit a record 13.4 million barrels a day in August, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.
